Australia Day Cooking Contest Details Rules and Entries

Any general items, polls
Captain Cook
Posts: 3968
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:49 am
Location: Melbourne

Re: Australia Day Cooking Contest Details Rules and Entries

Post by Captain Cook »

Entry #14


I thought long and hard about what my entry would be, and after reading several comments on the price of lamb and thinking back to the days when I was growing up and we were doing it tough. I also wanted to do a slight twist on dishes that typified dishes what the Aussie Battlers who made thois country would have as a day to day meal. I decided to do some old dishes with a bit of updating. I also decided to do it all on the Genesis as most regular Barbecuers use a gasser, I wanted to do something that people just starting out could do themselves and get great results. So this is my entry.

BBQ Lamb Mixed Grill - Nose to Tail (sort of)

The Menu

Home made Lamb sausages with lemon myrtle and pepper berry seasoning mixed with Hammer & Tong – (Tasmanian beer) Poached in beer and onions then grilled

Lamb loin chops brined with James Boags premium light Beer, salt, sugar and rosemary (I used light beer as I only wanted to lightly brine them LoL)

Lamb Kidneys marinated a homemade marinade

Aussie Damper BBQ Style

Onions sautéed in red wine and caramelized.

The cost of the meat was $22.00 and that was because I made up 3Kg of sausages, The meat that I used was Lamb off cuts which I got from my butcher @ $3.99 a Kg. The kidneys were $3.00 a pack and the 4 loin chops cost me $7.00.

Ingredients

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The Recipes

Lamb Sausages
3 Kg of Lamb offcuts
750 mls Hammer and Tong beer
250 gm beef sausage starter
50 gm Lemon Myrtle and Pepper Berry Spice mix

Mince up the Lamb. Add the beer to the sausage starter and mix in the spices. Mix all together by hand for 30 minutes or more (this breaks down the protein and stops it from having a grainy mouth feel). Fry off a bit of the mince and check for seasoning, adjust as required ( I added more pepper) Rest it in the fridge overnight.
Next day make the sausages - Makes about 35 sausages

Lamb Loin Chops
4 Lamb Loin Chops
375 mls James Boags Premium Light Beer
1 Fresh sprig Rosemary roughly chopped into 25 mm lengths
3 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons sugar
Add all the ingredients together is a small Ziploc bag and shake to dissolve salt and sugar. Trim the chops as required and add to the Ziploc bag. Close the Ziploc bag expelling all the air as you do so. Brine overnight in the fridge.

Lamb Kidneys
1 pk of kidneys about 500 gms
Marinade
2 Tblsps Tomato Sauce
2 Tblsps Worcestershire Sauce
1 Tblsp Honey
1 Tblsp Carlton Black Beer
2 tsps Red wine vinegar
2 tsps Olive Oil
2 tsps Ground Pepper
2 tsps Garlic Flakes

Using a stick blender (or by hand) blend all the marinade ingredients together and place in a small Ziploc bag. Trim the kidneys as required and add to the Ziploc bag. Close the Ziploc bag expelling all the air as you do so. Marinate overnight in the fridge.

Aussie Damper Q Style
2 cups self-rising flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
3 Tbsp butter (melted)
1 cup milk

Mix the flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Cut in the butter until fine crumbs form. Add milk to make a soft dough. Knead lightly on floured board until smooth (a couple of minutes). Place the dough in a small greased aluminum Weber Drip tray, brush lightly with milk.

Onions sautéed in red wine

2 large onions Thinly sliced and cut in half
4 Tblsps red wine
2 teaspoons sugar

Mix the sugar and wine together and add the onions. Massage the wine and onions. Double over a sheet of foil and fold 3 sides over a few times to make a pocket. Place the onions and wine in the pocket and fold the top side a few times making an airtight packet.

Cooking Method

Sausages
Place a baking tray on the side burner and pour a bottle of beer in the pan, add 1 sliced up onion, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes whilst the BBQ is pre heating. Add the sausages that you want cook and bring back to the simmer (should take 1 minute if your snags are at room temperature). Turn the side burner off and rotate the sausages in the poaching liquid (I remember my Mother always boiled the sausages before frying them. This removed a lot of the fat and also some flavour. By just warming them through using this method they retain their flavour and add additional flavours of the poaching liquid. Place the sausages on the grill at the same time as the chops. Place the sausages at the front of the grill. Leave the front burner on medium. Turn the sausages every minute and cook for 4 – 5 minutes .

The Damper
The Damper is cooked indirectly at about 400 - 450F, 400 being the ideal but in conjunction with other dishes I use 450 sometimes. Place the damper on just after the BBQ has preheated and turn the BBQ down to medium. I always cook the Damper on the Warming Rack. The Damper will take about 20 – 30 minutes. To check the damper place a skewer in the damper and withdraw it. If nothing sticks to the skewer it is ready to take off I always give it a tap as well it should make a hollow sound.

The Onions
The onions will take about 20 minutes to cook. Place them on the grill in an out of the way place and cook for about 10 minutes then flip the packet over, and cook for another 10 minutes. You can place them on the warming rack after 20 minutes until you have finished all the cooking if you want to.

The Kidneys
The kidneys take about 15 minutes to cook. I place a trivet on the grill to raise the kidneys off the grill so I don’t burn them (and end up with shoe leather. Place the trivet at the front part of the grill)Cooking them gently over medium heat, turning once after about 7 minutes produces a soft textured kidney that literally melts in your mouth

The Chops
Place the chops on the grill at the rear of the BBQ and turn the rear burner to high and the middle to medium Grill for 3 minutes on either side.

Remove the damper when cooked and let it rest.
Remove the Kidneys and onions when you have half cooked the sausages
Remove the sausages and then a minute or two later remove the chops

Finished dishes

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Serve.


Plated Up

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The Tastes

Her indoors and the friends that are staying with us wanted to join just to vote as they were super impressed with the results (They didn't join so no votes there).

The kidneys had a soft velvet like finish that melted in your mouth, The flavour was mild and the marinade had an oldtime homemade BBQ sauce flavour like my mother made.
The sausages - wow The sausages took on the lemon flavour of the lemon myrtle without that astringent citric flavour of fresh lemons. the pepper added just enough flavour to produce a small taste around the tongue without burning, the onions from the poaching liquid added a light texture to the sausage balancing out the flavours.
The chops - what can I say, brining always adds dimension to the flavours and helps retain moisture. these chops were melt in your mouth with a very light hit of rosemary in the background. Itr is something that my mother would have been proud to cook.
The damper was light and perfectly cooked you can see some of the air bubbles that I managed to get in it, It rose to about double it's size during cooking.
And finally the Onions in red wine. These are something that I do a lot of and have perfected the recipe, cooking method and timings for all my BBQs these ones were as good as the rest. They are always the first side dish to go.

I hope that you all enjoyed the journey as much as I did cooking it. It brought back many fond memories of my younger days and typified the types of dishes that I had growing up - Sausages, Chops, Offal, Grilled Onions and Damper. Thanks Mum

Cheers
Buccaneer

Re: Australia Day Cooking Contest Details Rules and Entries

Post by Buccaneer »


Entry #15

Technical Stuff that I forgot:
The recipe
Charcoal BBQed Lamb with Mashed potato quenelles,Poached pears and eschallots and mint peas , jus and a Beer and fruit gravy.
Ingredients
Gravy
250ml Coopers Stout
150 mls Vintage
150ml Old
330 ml Four X Summer Bright Lager
1 Lemon leaf
1 Mandarin leaf
1 star anise
4 Juniper berries
1 rosemary sprig
3 Tbs Bush Honey
1 sliver preserved lemon
3 Pears quartered
6 eschallots, whole skinned
s&p (white)
2 handfuls grapes, juice only
Lamb
1 Lamb Forequarter, deboned top
12 sprigs fresh thyme
2 &1/2 Elephant garlic pasted
2 Tbs sea salt
2 Tbs olive oil
Other Ingredients
3 Bartlet Pears (I think?)
6 eschallots
Minted Peas
2 Desire Potatoes
1 Lamb Forequarter leg
Fresh Thyme
3 Elephant Garlic

Gravy Method:

Skin eschallots, quarter pears, pour beers into gravy saucepan and set on simmer. Add crushed juniper berries, star anise, and 1 TBS of honeuy, a sprig of rosemary.
Cut the spine from the citrus leaves and roll and slice into threads, add to beer.Raise heat and bring to boil.
After it boils, reduce to simmer. When simmer is acheived, strain and put all liquids back into gravy saucepan with only the star anise, pears and shallots.
Simmer until reduced to one third and thickened
.Add 2 Tbs of bush honey.Test pears and eschallots and remove when done, can be pierced with slight resistance.
Place grapes in a chinoise and press juice through. Add juice to the reduced sauce along with a thumb sized oiece of butter that has been melted with plain flour and stirred till nut brown.
Whisk this mixture to thicken.
Lamb Method
Pound garlic, salt and thyme in a mortar until paste, smear inside lamb cavity and roll up and close using bands.
Rub outside with olive oil and salt, let rest to attain room temperature
Sit Lamb on an oven trivet on top of the weber kettle grate offset from the charcoal fire.
Roast with lid on for 45 to 50 minutes turning around head to tail once at 25 minutes.
Remove trivet and wrap lamb in double sheets of foil and rest 30 minutes before carving to serve.
Potatoes
2 Desire potatoes skin on
200g butter
salt and pepper (black)
Place potatoes in a pot just big enough to hold them and fill with COLD water, add 2 tsp of salt.Place on heat and gently boil for 20-25 minutes, test by piercing with a skewer and if it passes through and comes out clean they are done.
Remove and peel, put back into hot dry pot and agitate to dry out.
Pass through ricer into a bowl and stir in butter and season with generous sea salt and grind some black pepper to tase.
Use two warm tablespoons to shape quenelles and plate.
Drizzle gravy along edges and slightly over.
Peas:
Place into salted hot water in pot and cook just under the boil for three minutes and strain.

******************************************************************
First up, I had to test the lineup and choose the beer mix that would carry through for the gravy flavour I was chasing, something celebratory, Christmassy even.
Here is a snap of the Lineup including the flavours for the beer gravy.
In the snap you can see star anise and juniper berries (dried spices that would have been accessible to the settlers) and lemon and mandarin leaves fron the garden, rosemary sprigs and my favourite honey ever from childhood, bush honey with all those eucalyptus flavours. Grapes as I needed sweet fruit acids to invigorate and cut the thick bitterness and greasy mouthfeel of the heavy beers.
I ended up choosing one part Vintage, two Coopers Stout, one Old, and 4 parts Summer 4 X, surprisingly but it was a great choice to lighten.
I also used pears and eschallots in the cook. (The Katnook Cab Sav was used in the cook, not the cooking.)
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Next is the photo of the lamb forequarter.
It was cooked in the kettle over charcoal in the manner of our forebearers.
I pasted the interior with fresh thyme and garlic pounded to a paste with salt and pepper, banded it and cooked it to a traditional well done.
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The result:
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For the twist on the Australian hommage meal I used the ingredients to make a gravy and jus with a difference.
The beer was reduced including eschallots and pears, with the lemon and mandarin leaves and rosemary, preserved lemon and dried spices star anise and juniper berries until it was 1/3 the volume. I had removed all the flavourizers and then I added the bush honey and pressed grape juice.
The pears and eschallots were removed for a further reduction
Please forgive the photography.
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Here is the Thyme and garlic paste:
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The dish looked like this
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